


Matt Murdock vs. the Media

by JeannetteRankin



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, News Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 01:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4244211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeannetteRankin/pseuds/JeannetteRankin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/1742.html?thread=3179982#cmt3179982">this genius prompt</a>: <i>Matt, as Matt, saves the Avengers in a profoundly simple way when their tech and sight (via removal of light sources) is compromised. It's not complicated and absurdly simple yet everyone acts like he saved the world. The newspapers won't shut up about it but by at least they have more clientele.</i></p>
<p>a.k.a. Matt and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news cycle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Matt hates taking the subway. The motion makes him nauseous, it's usually crowded, and the noise from the screeching train brakes at every stop is like being stabbed in the ear with an ice pick to his sensitive hearing.

But today he hates it even more than usual. They're heading uptown and Matt had been trying to focus on Foggy's voice over the pounding noise, when the train came to a sudden, jerking halt and stops dead. Everyone lurches, and one person who'd been standing falls over. Matt is thrown against Foggy's side by momentum, and rights himself hastily.

“This isn't thirty fourth street,” Matt says to Foggy.

“No, buddy, we stopped in the middle of the tunnel for some reason,” Foggy tells him. Everyone on the train is murmuring and shifting nervously. That's when Matt hears it.

“Something's happening,” he mutters to Foggy, focusing down the train several cars where there's raised voices.

“What?” Foggy whispers back, alarmed. “Are you using your super-hearing?”

Matt shushes him. There's some kind of bang and then shouts of surprise, coming from maybe a three train cars away to his right. Matt's contemplating jumping up to go help, secrets be damned, when he hears someone running pell-mell down the train toward them, shoving people aside throwing open the doors between the cars as they go. It's not the sound of people fleeing in terror. It's the sound of trouble coming their way.

“They're coming,” he has time to tell Foggy.

“What, who?!” Foggy asks.

A few seconds later even Foggy can hear the people in the next car shouting and scrambling out of the way as the man running, and the two people chasing him, barrel through. The chasers are gaining on him.

Foggy moves as if to get up—with what idea in mind Matt has no clue—but Matt grabs his arm and holds him in place. The running man bursts into their train car. People scramble to get out of his way.

“Hold it!” The words come from one of the people giving chase, who stop just inside the car doors.

“Fuck,” Foggy whispers, and Matt hears his heart rate go up even more as he sees the pursuers.

The running man stops, not far from where Matt and Foggy are sitting and turns to face off against his pursuers.

“You saw how easily I took care of your little friends, Captain,” comes the voice of the runner, a man wearing some kind of long coat with something strange on his head. He has odd accoutrements on him, some mechanical devices, some odd chemical smells that Matt can't identify but that could be weapons of some kind.

“No matter how many gadgets you have up your sleeve, Doctor, it won't be enough to take down all of us.” The voice is stern, male, and resonant, coming from the large man standing in a defensive pose. The small, stealthy figure of the woman behind him is silent, though Matt can hear her sliding some kind of weapon out of a holster. They slowly advance on the man in the long coat.

“Don't, Captain!” the man holds up one hand, where something small and made of glass dangles from his fingers. The figures on the other end of the train car stop in their tracks. “There's a very nasty paralyzing agent in this vial. What a pity it would be if it were to break and poison all these innocent civilians.” This is the moment Matt fully realizes they're dealing with a grandiose supervillain situation. This is exactly why he never takes the subway. He makes a mental note to remind Foggy of this the next time he suggests it.

“Fuck,” comes Foggy's heartfelt whisper again, low enough that only Matt can hear. He knows Foggy well enough to know that he's looking around, trying to work out the best escape route and how he can get the little old lady sitting on his other side out through it. Matt tightens his grip on Foggy's arm.

“You don't want to do that,” the pursuing man says, and Matt is just figuring out between the oddly slow heartbeat and the frankly weird resonances of the large round disc of metal that the man's carrying that it has to be...

“Oh,” the supervillain says sarcastically, “Captain American thinks I 'don't want to do that.' Well, forgive me, _o capitán_ , but I think I do.”

The man pulls something off his head, some kind of goggles maybe, and settles them over his eyes. Then, before Matt or the Avengers or anyone else has time to do anything, he does...something with the thing in his hand.

Everyone else in the train car gasps suddenly, shocked, and babbling voices start coming from all around. Matt can't hear anything weird, can't smell anything. How could a gas hit the whole car simultaneously like that?

“Too bad you didn't think to bring your night-vision goggles!” the man says, with an over-rehearsed maniacal laugh, then he turns and starts running again.

Captain America and his compatriot are making their way down the aisle towards him to try and catch him, but they're stumbling, hesitating, and the other people on the train car are panicking, getting in their way.

It hadn't been any kind of gas; he'd lied. It had been something, magical or mechanical, that had put out all the lights. And now the entire train car is plunged into subterranean darkness.

Matt's instincts take over. There's no way the two Avengers will make it in time in the dark, but Matt? Matt inhabits the dark, and the dark inhabits him. This is Matt's world, and in that moment, decades of training and carefully disciplined preparation leap into action. Finely honed senses snap into focus, and the living weapon that is his body knows exactly what to do.

He sticks out one foot and trips the guy.


	2. Chapter 2

He might have gotten away with it. He was damned close to getting away with it, in fact, except that Foggy had figured out he'd done something and demanded an explanation as they were waiting for the emergency teams to clear the scene. Once Foggy knew, of course, being Foggy, he told _everyone_. Because his best friend had foiled a supervillain and saved two Avengers, and Foggy is the kind of person who is constitutionally incapable of not telling everyone. (Even if that's not exactly what happened.) So he tells the cops and the EMTs, and then when they finally get out of the tunnel and get above ground, he repeats it to some lady who turns out to be a reporter for the _Post_.

The headlines the next day, which Foggy gleefully reads out to him, are positively giddy.

AVENGERS CAUGHT IN THE DARK, BLIND MAN COMES TO THE RESCUE

LIGHTS OUT FOR CAP AS LOCAL LAWYER SAVES FUMBLING AVENGERS

BLIND JUSTICE: NYC LAWYER SAVES SUPERHEROES

VILLIAN VEXED BY VISUALLY-IMPAIRED, VIGILANTES VIE IN VAIN

“Aww,” Karen tells him, looking over one of the papers, “the _Daily News_ has a cute photo of you.” She seems to be finding the whole situation amusing.

“Hey, I think they got that from my facebook,” Foggy says.

“Foggy,” Matt sighs. Foggy's carelessness with social media and the occasional breaches of Matt's privacy to which it's led are an old sore spot. Last time it had only been an ex-girlfriend, not a major newspaper.

“Ooh,” Foggy says, pointing to one of the articles, “this one calls you 'ruggedly handsome.'”

“Is he _rugged_ , though?” Karen asks, speculatively. Matt misses the days when she had a crush on him and saved all her teasing for Foggy.

“No, you're right,” Foggy responds. They both turn toward Matt for a moment, examining his features, he assumes. “Not so much rugged. I'd say more cherubic.”

“We should get them to print a retraction,” she laughs.

Karen stops thinking it's cute when the office is flooded with phone calls by journalists, weirdos, and general members of the public trying to thank him or tell him he's an idiot. Matt tries to ignore it and get some work done, but it's hard when he can hear both sides of every conversation. By three in the afternoon, Matt tells her to just turn the ringer off.

“Yeah,” Foggy agrees. “Let 'em leave voicemails. We'll sort out the potential clients from the crackpots later. It'll die off by tomorrow.”

Matt figures he's right.

The next day, he walks into the office and Karen says, “Oh, I'm sorry, Matt,” in a tone he normally associates with funerals.

“What?” he asks, wary.

“You haven't seen--? I mean, you don't know about today's headlines?”

“No.” There's a distinct sinking feeling in his stomach.

“I guess someone dug into your past, and the _Post_ did another cover about you, and your accident from when you were a kid.” He can hear the tiny noise of her biting her lip.

Matt only sighs. “Okay,” he tells her. “It's fine. I guess I should have expected that.” He resolutely does not look up the articles online. He doesn't want to know.

Five minutes later, Foggy bustles in cheerfully, paper in hand. “Where is he? Where is the 'childhood hero' who 'can't stop saving lives?' and 'whose tragic past has made him an every-day guardian angel?'” He cackles.

Matt gives up and puts his head down on his desk.

The day's phone deluge is even worse, and they don't even try to get any work done. Instead of just crackpots, they're now getting calls from bookers desperate to get Matt on a variety of TV and radio shows.

Karen is a champ, gamely taking messages, calmly rebuffing demands to speak to Matt, and unflappably reiterating 'no comment' at least a dozen times before lunch.

Foggy, on the other hand, is gleeful about the media opportunities. He urges, wheedles, and orders Matt to accept them. Finally he resorts to dire and, in Matt's opinion, grossly unfair threats to get him to agree to do one of the interviews.

“Just one,” Matt growls, finally giving in after Foggy brings up a certain law school incident.

“Okay, man, that's all I'm asking. Think of the publicity!” Foggy is enraptured and Matt can practically hear the cash register noises ringing in the background as he coaches him on how to casually name drop the firm on air.

Which is how Matt winds up getting up at five thirty the next morning and taking a cab to a TV studio in Times Square. No rational New Yorker would ever go to Times Square voluntarily, but at least the producer that meets with him to go over the contents of the interview is nice, and they have good coffee.

“Don't be nervous,” the host tells him kindly when he's led out during a commercial break and seated on a squishy sofa.

“I'm not,” Matt assures her with a half-smile. The lights are a bit warm, but he can't really say that a bubbly morning TV host ranks very high on his list of intimidating face-offs he's had.

She introduces him on air, describing the subway incident briefly in a mostly fact-based way. He concentrates very hard on not fidgeting or giving anything away with his face when she talks about his 'sad childhood.' She makes a point of emphasizing that he grew up in an orphanage, and the undertones of pity in her voice make Matt's stomach churn.

“Thank you for coming on the show today, Matt,” she says, turning to him.

“Thank you for having me, Robin,” he says, making sure to keep his tone light. “After all the media coverage of the incident on the subway, I was happy to have a chance to tell my side of the story and set the record straight.”

“Are you saying that what's in the papers isn't what happened?”

“Only that my role in it has been exaggerated by the more excitable members of the media,” he tells her with what he hopes is a charming grin. She gives him the chance to tell his side and he walks through what happened, emphasizing how minor his role had been. “Really, the only thing I did was stick out my foot,” he winds up.

“Wow, well, I still think that what you did was pretty incredible. Your actions led to the apprehension of a major criminal.”

“I'm just happy I could help.”

“And when the lights in the car went off and everyone started panicking, what was going through your mind at that moment?”

“I was worried for the people on the train. My best friend and law partner, Foggy, was next to me, and I was afraid something would happen to him. You know, he got caught in those bombings a few months ago and wound up in the hospital—the guy just seems to attract trouble.” Matt knows that Foggy is squawking indignantly from wherever he's watching. _And that's for making me do this interview_.

“You weren't scared for yourself?” she asks. “I mean, the last time you jumped into a dangerous situation to help, you were blinded!”

“I guess my adrenaline was going too much,” he says with a little laugh, resisting the urge to reply _well, you can only get blinded once, so_. “It didn't even occur to me to be scared until later.”

“Between this and the fact that you saved that man's life in the chemical accident, I'd say you have a habit of saving people. Do you see a bright future of crime-fighting ahead of you?” she asks lightly, laughing innocently.

He chuckles along. “Well, I became a lawyer to try and do some good,” he says, “though it's not always easy. But this? It was really just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. It's what anyone would have done,” he's used that line often enough. “I just happened to be there and have that chance.”

“Well, I think you're selling yourself short, there,” the host says, warmly. “I'd say what you did was downright heroic.”

“I guess we'll have to agree to disagree,” he says, smiling.

“So,” she says, in an arch way that Matt's pretty sure means he's not going to like the next question. “You're a young, handsome, heroic lawyer. I'm sure our viewers want to know—are you single?”

“Ah,” Matt says, fidgeting a bit before he catches himself, “Actually, yes, I am.”

“Really?” is the incredulous question. “No girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Uh, no,” Matt says, slightly awkwardly. “No, nothing like that.”

“But you can,” the host asks, changing tone and suddenly sounding concerned. “You can..date, right? I don't want to be insensitive.”

“I, yes, I really can.” Of all the weird questions he's gotten about being blind, that's a new one. “I mean, I have had girlfriends before, just none at the moment.”

“Well, I'm sure you'll get a lot of offers after this!” she says, in a voice which implies she's just done him a big favor. Matt suppresses the urge to throw his cane across the studio.

The interview wraps up quickly after that.

“One last question--is there anything you would say to Captain America and the Black Widow if you could?”

“Well, they've saved a lot of people,” Matt says, as honestly as he can. He has mixed feelings about the whole Avengers thing, actually, but he figures it would be hypocritical, not to mention impolitic, to criticize them on TV. “They throw themselves in harm's way—deliberately, not just by accident—to keep people safe. So I suppose I would just say 'thanks.'”

The interview could have been the end of it. A flash-in-the-pan, human interest story. Despite the fact that he hadn't managed to actually mention their firm specifically on the air (between that and the attracts-trouble dig, Foggy refuses to speak to Matt...which lasts about fifteen minutes, until Matt agrees to make a bagel run), interest in their firm definitely spikes, and they have several new prospective clients, some of whom are actually decent people that Matt feels good about the idea of taking on.

“It almost makes that interview worth it,” he tells Foggy, grudgingly.

“After everything you've done as the,” Foggy pauses and his head swivels around as if he's checking for people nearby who might overhear, even though they're alone in the office, “air-day ehvil-day, isn't it nice to get a little recognition for once?” Matt can't detect any trace of rancor in Foggy's question, which is nice. Foggy's been slowly coming around to acceptance of his 'night job,' but there's still times when he's touchy about it.

“I prefer fighting crime anonymously. Behind a mask,” he tells Foggy resolutely. “Where no one can ask me awkward questions.”

The interview _could_ have been the end of it, but it wasn't. Because the following day, some gossip blogger manages to buttonhole Steve Rogers coming out of a restaurant, and the resulting twelve second video gets over five hundred thousand views in twelve hours.


	3. Chapter 3

The audio of the clip, when Matt listens to it, has some street noise in the background, then two voices, the first one an unknown man: “Did you know that Matt Murdock publicly thanked you for saving this city?”

“Oh? That's nice.” That's Captain America's voice, recognizable from the subway the other day.

“Would you say 'thank you' to him as well for his help?”

“Uh,” There's a short pause, and it's obvious Steve Rogers has no idea who the 'Matt Murdock' that this guy is talking about is. “Excuse me, I'm just gonna...”

Foggy cracks up over the video as he's replaying it. “Oh, man,” he tells Matt, “you should see his face. An instant of total blankness, and then he makes this little gesture like 'I'm gonna get the hell away from you, crazy person.'” He busts up laughing again, replaying it for what must be the tenth time.

“Yeah, but now the internet is going nuts,” Matt complains. They were. The gossip blog had published the video as 'Captain America Refuses to Thank Matt Murdock, Blind Lawyer Who Stopped Subway Attack' and other sites were even worse. They were making it sound like the man had deliberately snubbed him. “This is ridiculous.”

“The internet being ridiculous?” Karen interjects dryly. “Astonishing.”

“She's got a point,” Foggy says.

It only gets worse when the Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Alliance, a group that had been on Matt's radar since they formed to help displaced residents in the aftermath of the Battle of New York, gets a bright idea. They decide to hold a fundraiser for St. Agnes Orphanage with Matt and Captain America as their local celebrity attractions. They want to throw a carnival for the kids and invite the whole neighborhood, soliciting donations and raising awareness of the need for adoptive and foster parents.

“That sounds great,” is Foggy's opinion.

“Yeah,” Matt says. “Except they're making it contingent on Captain Rogers' agreeing to show up, and shake my hand, for publicity.”

“Well, sure, that's the whole schtick, isn't it?” Foggy asks, reasonably.

“I don't like it,” Matt tells him. “I'm more than happy to turn my fifteen minutes into some good for St. Agnes, but this feels ... slimy.”

He tells Karen to call the Avengers' PR people and explain for him that he had nothing to do with the fundraiser, and doesn't want any part of pressuring Captain Rogers into anything.

“Why don't you call them?” she asks.

“If I do it, it comes off as passive aggressive.” Plus, he feels like an idiot, but he doesn't add that. She probably figures it out because she gives an amused sigh and tilts her head in a way that he's pretty sure means she's rolling her eyes at him.

To Matt's dismay and Karen's delight, the PR rep she gets on the phone explains that Captain Rogers has already instructed them to agree to the appearance, and they're setting up the details with the neighborhood association right now.

“No way,” Matt says after she hangs up the phone and explains to him everything he's just overheard.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she tells him unsympathetically. “Captain America already agreed. There's no way _you_ are going to back out now. So just put your big boy boots on and go kiss some babies.”

She's right, of course. Two weeks later, Matt spends his Saturday at his old orphanage, being hugged by nuns he hasn't seen in years and then ushered onto a stage with Cap himself.

“Matt Murdock, I presume,” the man says, a smile in his voice.

“Captain Rogers,” Matt says, holding his hand out for a handshake.

“Call me Steve.” He gives a firm shake, his grip strong but not overpowering. “Nice to meet you.”

“S-sorry about all this,” Matt tells him, stammering a little. “I tried to talk them out of it, but they just wouldn't stop. And then they made a promise to the orphanage...”

“It's okay. I wanted to. I don't mind helping out a good cause. And, they have a point, I did want to thank you.”

Matt shakes his head. “No, you don't, you don't have to,” he explains haltingly. “I didn't do anything, really. I'd rather not be thanked for something I didn't do. I mean, he wasn't all that much of a villain, was he?”

Steve laughs a little. “No, I guess he wasn't.”

“We could find little old ladies in this city scarier than that.”

“The little old ladies of New York can be pretty damn scary,” Steve says. “That loon in red trench coat, not so much.”

“The whole thing just got blown out of proportion,” Matt tells him. There really is something about Cap that makes you want to be honest, because he admits, “I just wish everyone would stop talking about it and leave it alone.”

“I understand if the attention makes you uncomfortable,” Steve tells him, kindly. “But something I learned a long time ago is, that's it not always about you. Sometimes people need to express their gratitude. And the gracious thing, I think, is to let them.”

There's a little introduction by the orphanage administrator, then Matt says a few words about how grateful he is for all the hard work of the people at Saint Agnes, how lucky he was in having grown up there and how he hopes everyone will be generous in their support. Cap gives a little speech in which he pulls off an impressive guilt-trip on the audience about supporting the less fortunate. Matt's pretty sure a few of the audience members are actually in tears before Cap is done, and he can hear the sounds of numerous people taking out their wallets.

Afterward, the organizers make them stand over in the garden to get some shots of the two of them together. Twenty minutes of fussing and shooting later, the photographer finally leaves them alone and it's just Matt and Steve standing there. The administrator has disappeared, and Matt is wondering how bad it would be if he just left now that the speech and photos are over. The side gate is right near them. Matt would really rather get away before anything else can happen for the media to lose their minds over. The last thing he wants is to set off another round of newspaper headlines.

He's on the verge of asking Steve if he wants to make a break for it along with him, when Matt's attention is suddenly caught by something happening at the nuns' table a dozen yards away. There's a someone, a young someone, standing at one side of the table with his heart pounding furiously.

There's a shuffling, a scraping noise, and the faint rustling of paper and jangling of coins. Then footfalls, light and fast, heading in their direction, along with the jangling, now rapid.

Matt, without pausing to consider, reaches out and grabs the arm of the teenage boy. The boy yelps and drops the donations box.

“Get out of here,” Matt tells the kid, releasing him. The kid, heart pounding, runs.

Steve picks up the box.

“Oh, no.” Matt says, rubbing his hand across his face. _Just wait until the press gets a hold of this_. 'Blind Lawyer Saves the Day Again as Cap Stands Idly By' he hears it in his imagination in Foggy's smug voice.

“How did you do that?” Steve asks him, curious, as he picks up a few spilled coins and bills off the ground.

“I heard the rattle of the coins,” Matt said, “And then running. It wasn't that hard to figure out.” Any second now someone's going to ask what happened. Several people have noticed the kerfuffle and are coming over.

“Wow, that's incredible,” Steve tells him, sounding honestly impressed. “You saved the--”

“Shhh!” Matt interrupts, shushing him urgently. Maybe later he'll feel bad about shushing Captain America.

“Matthew,” calls Sister Eunice, hurrying over to them. “What happened?”

“It was--” Steve starts.

“Him!” Matt says loudly, clapping one hand on Steve's broad shoulder. “All him. Steve saw that kid about to run off with the donations box and stopped him.”

“I--” Steve tries again, turning his head slightly toward Matt.

“Captain America saved the day,” Matt tells the Sisters. “I'm just lucky I got to witness it.”

The Sisters all cluster around, cooing over Steve, thanking him and saying how lucky they are that he was here. Judging by Steve's heartbeat and body language, he's intensely uncomfortable.

“Well,” Sister Eunice declares, “why don't we get that lovely photographer over here to take a photo of us with Captain Rogers in the middle. We can hang it in the atrium.” The other nuns chorus their agreement.

“Matt,” Steve whispers to him in a clear 'rescue me' tone. The nuns are closing in, arguing about who gets to stand next to him for the picture. Sister Catherine is stroking one hand up and down his arm.

“They just want to express their gratitude, Captain Rogers,” Matt tells him with a merciless smile. “The gracious thing to do is let them. Don't you think?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading along with this story, it was so much fun to write. (And thanks to the OP for the amazing prompt that I couldn't pass up.) If you enjoyed this and want to watch me terrorize my faves with awkward social situations in the future, you can [find me on Tumblr](http://jeannetterankin.tumblr.com/) or go to [my author page](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JeannetteRankin) and hit Subscribe.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Matt Murdock vs. the Media](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12125607) by [Jadesfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadesfire/pseuds/Jadesfire)




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